And more than a third -- 35.3 percent, to be exact -- have a "strongly unfavorable" opinion of the Tea Party, according to a new Lambert Edwards & Associates (LE&A)/Denno Research poll done from Nov. 12 to 14.

Only 28.8 percent of voters view the movement positively, with a scant 10.7 percent giving it "strongly favorable" marks.

Women tend to decide elections. And they're not buying what the Tea Party is selling.

By almost a 2-to-1 margin (44 percent to 25 percent) in the LE&A/Denno poll, women see the Tea Party as a negative force. One-third of women have a very unfavorable opinion, with only 12 percent seeing the Tea Party very positively.

But it's clear from polling that most women don't relate to the Tea Party, especially as it's increasingly pushed social issues, like anti-abortion measures.

"Economic issues were, at one point, at their core, but leadership has allowed social issues to completely draw them off what was once a good rhetorical course," LE&A Senior Director T.J. Bucholz told Inside Michigan Politics. "And I don't think they can ever right the ship."

There's also no love lost between independents and the Tea Party.

Most Tea Party activists I've interviewed insist that their movement is independent of the Republican Party. They're not lifelong Republicans -- just average citizens who have become politically engaged due to concerns about "runaway debt" since Barack Obama became president (although they were curiously silent during George W. Bush's spending spree).

Leaders like Bachmann have even claimed there's a lot of Democratic support for the movement, although the poll found 74 percent now view it unfavorably.

But the Tea Party doesn't appeal to independents. The poll finds another 19-point deficit, with 44 percent of indies holding an unfavorable opinion of the Tea Party and only 25 percent viewing it positively.

"The Tea Party ultimately caters to very conservative voters, but their messaging is targeted toward people who identify themselves as independents," Bucholz told IMP. "I think Tea Party leadership believes the voters in the in the middle and tired of politics as usual. But the crosstabs didn't bear that out -- only one-quarter of indies identified as supportive."

More than half of Republicans say the Tea Party is distinctive from the GOP, according to a national Pew Research survey. But the Tea Party's influence on Republicans seems clear, as an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that non-Tea Party Republicans are abandoning the party.

It's clear that the Tea Party will never be a widespread movement. The question now is if it still has the clout to play an outsized role in the Republican Party.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. She can be reached at susan@sjdemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.